NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON — Hutchinson Fire Capt. Troy Mueller said fighting wildfires in Kansas is very different today than it was in decades past.
"One of the things that's changed around here is the fuel type that we have," Mueller said. "With the cedars that we have, it's definitely changed us from an open grass prairie grass fire to really more of the fuel type that you see in Southern California, with the chapparal and stuff and when we have wind events, anytime we have wind, that's the main driver for our fires here."
It's really disheartening for firefighters to enter property that has had such overgrowth that it is impossible to defend.
"We can't even access a road if people can't get some of that stuff out of the way," said Battalion Chief Rex Albright. "There's property that's completely unsaveable for us. There's no way that we can get in front of it, with the amount of heat and flame height that we have coming at it, there's no man that can stand in front of that. It's truly up to the homeowner to start looking at that, but the cedar trees are the big thing."
Captain Ryan Winters was on the brush truck that had damage during the Cottonwood Complex Fire which Chief Beer referred to during his equipment request to the City Council earlier this month.
"We were with Brush 41 at that time, responding out of Station 4," said Winters. "We were the first truck on scene. It had already jumped 4th Street by the time we got there. We got in contact with our operations chief. We went directly to the head fire at that point and was trying to help with structure support on the north end area of the fire and trying to get it back into the burned area from the Albright Fire. We kind of got in a hairy situation with the wind shifts and everything. The fire flanked out around behind us.
"We were kind of trapped, trying to get back to our safe area and the fire rolled over the top of us. I was outside the vehicle at the time. We were able to make access back to the cab of the truck. At that point, everything kind of got real dicey. With zero visibility, our directional was kind of challenging at that point to see where our safe zone was. Overall, we did find it. We were able to save the structure we that were on, but the fire was moving so fast, so rapidly, we were in a tight spot there."
Mueller noted as part of the City Council presentation how important it is that firefighters continue to upgrade their equipment as it ages out.